--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> At this point, no. However, if I hear lots of
> reports
> of Sarin-wielding leprechauns (who are Catholic, so
> it
> should be in Latin, maybe this is an IRA
> leprechaun)prowling around my neighborhood, I will
> probably start looking for leprechauns. Similarly,
No, no, I don't mean leprechauns in general. I mean THE ONE RIGHT BEHIND YOU! HE'S IN THE HOUSE! OHMIGOD!
Seriously though, you can use the same appeal to ignorance for possible existence of Jason the Leprechaun just as well as miracles in general. We just can't prove it ain't so (if you turn around, Jason goes invisible), so we're supposed to consider it a mystery?
I used to subscribe to the Skeptical Inquirer, put out by an organization that goes around investigating UFO sightings, claims of ESP and the like. James Randi's probably their most famous name, though I think Carl Sagan hung with them as well. After a while I let my subscription lapse: There are only so many tales of flung pie plates and false thumbs holding chicken guts you can read before you lose interest. It just gets monotonous. My favorite bits were where some Uri Geller clone would get exposed as a fraud, but there'd be some fan who'd say something like, "But what about all the times he *didn't* get caught? *Those* still could have been real miracles!"
> if
> I am an Apache and some starts talking about
> weird-ass-looking dangerous white men from across
> the
> infinite sea with sticks that belch fire, I will
> laugh
> at them. However, once I start hearing reports from
> lots of people saying the same thing, I may change
> my
> mind.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your position here, because that's what I think about those miracles....
>
> Good point about the canonization. Actually, does
> anybody know about just how the RCC goes about its
> miracle-checking claims?
Somebody mentioned the tightening leeway left by science for miracles. Does that mean that the um rate of canonization has slowed down? I want to see that phrase in a paper title: "rate of canonization".
Andy
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